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Roaming Through the West Indies
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490 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1920
22 people want to read
About the author
Harry A. Franck
63 books5 followersHarry Alverson Franck, better known as Harry A. Franck was an American travel writer during the first half of the 20th century.
http://www.harryafranck.com/
http://www.harryafranck.com/
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July 14, 2023
Roaming Through the West Indies (1920) by Harry A. Franck
This is my second, and probably last, Harry A. Franck book. I bought it as someone who currently works in the Dominican Republic and have specifically sought out sources related to the period of U.S. occupation and military governorship of the country. That chapter does not dissappoint, as Franck travels throughout the country and reports on the details and latest thought (positive and negative) about the occupation. Like his other books, his observations are from a wanderer who fills his pages with details about trees and rocks as well as anecdotes from the common folk he meets. In this work, he does less tramping and more boat and carriage riding-- he's married now and his bride travels with him, requiring more luxuries at points than before.
Like the previous work I'd read, I find Franck's attitude declines and his annoyance increases the more weeks he continues into the journey. He begins this book with his travels in the American South, making some high-minded judgemental observations about the racism clearly displayed in Georgia and elsewhere from his northerner perspective. He ends his book with long racist judgements about the poor qualities of Black people and his clear annoyance with them in the Caribbean by the end of his journey. (More on that below.)
Prior to visiting the DR (then called Santo Domingo), he travels extensively in Haiti and is a firsthand witness to some of the U.S. military's exploits in capturing would-be rebels, complete with some photos, some of which I find missing from other historical works covering the period. Indeed, Franck records recent anecdotes in multiple countries that have since been lost in the record, such as drunken U.S. Marines shooting a hole in a still-standing clock tower in Monte Christi (and provides photographic evidence).
"Santo Domingo could be a success so long as some overwhelming power holds it steady by appointing the better class of officials and keeping an exacting eye constantly upon them."
Franck records the fourth and fifth generation descendents of Americans keeping English active in Samana (a tale still told about the area 100 years and generations later), the work of the U.S. government to collect customs duties and build infrastructure in the non-colony, and the positive and negatives of the American occupation. The Marines succeeded in disarming the whole civilian population of the country (which may surprise 2nd Amendment partisans today) with positive and negative consequences. Franck's chief lament is that that the U.S. isn't investing in education, particularly English education, like it did in the Philippines-- something I have also observed and contrasted from my time there studying the Philippines' U.S. history. Prohibition was in full effect in the United States and its legal territories, but the law did not apply to the occupied island, and the Marines were known to drink. There were definite atrocities committed in Haiti and Santo Domingo at the time, and Franck finds that the worst apples among the administration in Haiti and Santo Domingo were racist southerners. Most Americans today are likely wholly unawaware of the history of occupation.
Franck opines that "Not only should Americans remain long enough in Santo Domingo to train a new generation, but we should tell them at once that such is our firm intention. The rumor that our troops are about to be withdrawn is always going around the country, leaving no one a certain peg on which to hang his hat."
Franck's thoughts are a reminder of caution in nation-building as tge the U.S. troops would completely withdraw a few years later, having accomplished the mission of stabilizing the country and getting its fiscal house in order. But it would leave in its wake a dictator that would inflict decades of scars on the land, and the populace only marginally better-educated or economically competitive than before. I found these chapters to be important to U.S. history.
Franck visits the newly-acquired U.S. Virgin Islands and reports his disgust on why we paid such a price for them in the first place. He observes that in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the U.S. is not doing much good in developing education or infrastructure, and the level of investment required to make a difference seeming to be much higher than the U.S. taxpayer would be willing to pay-- something backed up by poor U.S. budgets and administration for the Caribbean over the decades. Some of the best development work that Franck records was being done by the Rockefeller Foundation and other charities, fighting hookworm and other diseases.
"The Virgin Islanders have several grievances against the Americans who have adopted them, the strictness of their color-line, for instance; but the greatest of these is prohibition...I have yet to find any one who knows just why we bought the Virgin Islands, still less why we paid twenty-five millions for them...If the loss of the twenty-five millions were an end of the matter, we might forget it; but it is costing us more than half a million a year to support our little black children."
Franck travels to the British and French territories in the Caribbean as well, comparing and contrasting their manners and attitudes. His exasperation with inhabitants' poor English, "indolent" manner, rudeness towards white women, and lack of culture are on full display by the end of the book. Regarding a town in Grenada: "(D)espite its distant loveliness, the town was overrun by the half-insolent, half-cringing black creatures who so mar all the Caribbean wonderland, until one is ready to curse the men of long ago who exterminated the aborigines and brought in their place this lowest species of the human family." Similarly, regarding Barbados: "As with all negroes, there is a shallowness back of their politeness, a something which reminds you every now and then that they have no history, no traditions, no ancient culture—such as that which is apparent, for instance, in the most ragged Hindu coolie—behind them." Jamaica, his least-favorite spot: "The Jamaican has all the faults of his rulers and his own negro delinquencies to boot. He is slow-witted, inhospitable, arrogant when he dares to be, cringing when he feels that to be to his advantage....the aborigines called the island Xamayca, the land of springs and water; and how one regrets that those same red men do not inhabit it still, if only to give relief from the monotony of black, brutal faces that in time grow almost intolerable to the traveler in the West Indies, until there come moments when he would give all he possesses to see these gems of the Caribbean as they were before they became mere hives of African slovenliness."
To end on a positive note, another observation of Franck's that I enjoyed over his journey was his constant quizzing the population on their opinions of whether to remain under European control or whether they would prefer American governorship in this post WWI era of supposed "self-determination" (which the British colonies would not experience for decades, and the Dutch and French territories not at all). The idea was being floated at the time as the European powers needed to pay off their massive war debts. Opinions varied across the territories, but I found the observations of a resident of French Martinique most telling:
“We are quite ready to admit that the United States would give us more material advancement in two years than France has in two centuries...but we feel a love for France as for a mother...(But) from our point of view the United States is the greatest autocracy in the world; it has no real republican form of government, no real freedom of the people. Take your white slave law and the prohibition amendment, for example; they are abhorrent to our idea of liberty. The idea of a great federal government chasing a pair of lovers because they happen to cross a state-line, or putting a free citizen in jail merely for selling a bottle of wine, a perfectly legitimate action in any part of the world since the dawn of history! C’est fantastique. The Americans violate our very conception of civil liberty...And above all, under French rule we people of color have what America never has and never will give us, equality of opportunity and standing with the whites.”
Franck concludes the book by suggesting it would benefit the U.S. to acquire the territories only if they came without the populations.
In all, I give this book two stars out of five. The racism and frustrations of the author increase as he tires of the journey, but its historical value, particularly looking at the occupation of the island of Hispaniola are quite important.
This is my second, and probably last, Harry A. Franck book. I bought it as someone who currently works in the Dominican Republic and have specifically sought out sources related to the period of U.S. occupation and military governorship of the country. That chapter does not dissappoint, as Franck travels throughout the country and reports on the details and latest thought (positive and negative) about the occupation. Like his other books, his observations are from a wanderer who fills his pages with details about trees and rocks as well as anecdotes from the common folk he meets. In this work, he does less tramping and more boat and carriage riding-- he's married now and his bride travels with him, requiring more luxuries at points than before.
Like the previous work I'd read, I find Franck's attitude declines and his annoyance increases the more weeks he continues into the journey. He begins this book with his travels in the American South, making some high-minded judgemental observations about the racism clearly displayed in Georgia and elsewhere from his northerner perspective. He ends his book with long racist judgements about the poor qualities of Black people and his clear annoyance with them in the Caribbean by the end of his journey. (More on that below.)
Prior to visiting the DR (then called Santo Domingo), he travels extensively in Haiti and is a firsthand witness to some of the U.S. military's exploits in capturing would-be rebels, complete with some photos, some of which I find missing from other historical works covering the period. Indeed, Franck records recent anecdotes in multiple countries that have since been lost in the record, such as drunken U.S. Marines shooting a hole in a still-standing clock tower in Monte Christi (and provides photographic evidence).
"Santo Domingo could be a success so long as some overwhelming power holds it steady by appointing the better class of officials and keeping an exacting eye constantly upon them."
Franck records the fourth and fifth generation descendents of Americans keeping English active in Samana (a tale still told about the area 100 years and generations later), the work of the U.S. government to collect customs duties and build infrastructure in the non-colony, and the positive and negatives of the American occupation. The Marines succeeded in disarming the whole civilian population of the country (which may surprise 2nd Amendment partisans today) with positive and negative consequences. Franck's chief lament is that that the U.S. isn't investing in education, particularly English education, like it did in the Philippines-- something I have also observed and contrasted from my time there studying the Philippines' U.S. history. Prohibition was in full effect in the United States and its legal territories, but the law did not apply to the occupied island, and the Marines were known to drink. There were definite atrocities committed in Haiti and Santo Domingo at the time, and Franck finds that the worst apples among the administration in Haiti and Santo Domingo were racist southerners. Most Americans today are likely wholly unawaware of the history of occupation.
Franck opines that "Not only should Americans remain long enough in Santo Domingo to train a new generation, but we should tell them at once that such is our firm intention. The rumor that our troops are about to be withdrawn is always going around the country, leaving no one a certain peg on which to hang his hat."
Franck's thoughts are a reminder of caution in nation-building as tge the U.S. troops would completely withdraw a few years later, having accomplished the mission of stabilizing the country and getting its fiscal house in order. But it would leave in its wake a dictator that would inflict decades of scars on the land, and the populace only marginally better-educated or economically competitive than before. I found these chapters to be important to U.S. history.
Franck visits the newly-acquired U.S. Virgin Islands and reports his disgust on why we paid such a price for them in the first place. He observes that in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the U.S. is not doing much good in developing education or infrastructure, and the level of investment required to make a difference seeming to be much higher than the U.S. taxpayer would be willing to pay-- something backed up by poor U.S. budgets and administration for the Caribbean over the decades. Some of the best development work that Franck records was being done by the Rockefeller Foundation and other charities, fighting hookworm and other diseases.
"The Virgin Islanders have several grievances against the Americans who have adopted them, the strictness of their color-line, for instance; but the greatest of these is prohibition...I have yet to find any one who knows just why we bought the Virgin Islands, still less why we paid twenty-five millions for them...If the loss of the twenty-five millions were an end of the matter, we might forget it; but it is costing us more than half a million a year to support our little black children."
Franck travels to the British and French territories in the Caribbean as well, comparing and contrasting their manners and attitudes. His exasperation with inhabitants' poor English, "indolent" manner, rudeness towards white women, and lack of culture are on full display by the end of the book. Regarding a town in Grenada: "(D)espite its distant loveliness, the town was overrun by the half-insolent, half-cringing black creatures who so mar all the Caribbean wonderland, until one is ready to curse the men of long ago who exterminated the aborigines and brought in their place this lowest species of the human family." Similarly, regarding Barbados: "As with all negroes, there is a shallowness back of their politeness, a something which reminds you every now and then that they have no history, no traditions, no ancient culture—such as that which is apparent, for instance, in the most ragged Hindu coolie—behind them." Jamaica, his least-favorite spot: "The Jamaican has all the faults of his rulers and his own negro delinquencies to boot. He is slow-witted, inhospitable, arrogant when he dares to be, cringing when he feels that to be to his advantage....the aborigines called the island Xamayca, the land of springs and water; and how one regrets that those same red men do not inhabit it still, if only to give relief from the monotony of black, brutal faces that in time grow almost intolerable to the traveler in the West Indies, until there come moments when he would give all he possesses to see these gems of the Caribbean as they were before they became mere hives of African slovenliness."
To end on a positive note, another observation of Franck's that I enjoyed over his journey was his constant quizzing the population on their opinions of whether to remain under European control or whether they would prefer American governorship in this post WWI era of supposed "self-determination" (which the British colonies would not experience for decades, and the Dutch and French territories not at all). The idea was being floated at the time as the European powers needed to pay off their massive war debts. Opinions varied across the territories, but I found the observations of a resident of French Martinique most telling:
“We are quite ready to admit that the United States would give us more material advancement in two years than France has in two centuries...but we feel a love for France as for a mother...(But) from our point of view the United States is the greatest autocracy in the world; it has no real republican form of government, no real freedom of the people. Take your white slave law and the prohibition amendment, for example; they are abhorrent to our idea of liberty. The idea of a great federal government chasing a pair of lovers because they happen to cross a state-line, or putting a free citizen in jail merely for selling a bottle of wine, a perfectly legitimate action in any part of the world since the dawn of history! C’est fantastique. The Americans violate our very conception of civil liberty...And above all, under French rule we people of color have what America never has and never will give us, equality of opportunity and standing with the whites.”
Franck concludes the book by suggesting it would benefit the U.S. to acquire the territories only if they came without the populations.
In all, I give this book two stars out of five. The racism and frustrations of the author increase as he tires of the journey, but its historical value, particularly looking at the occupation of the island of Hispaniola are quite important.
March 7, 2025
Afoot is how Harry Franck usually conducts his travels to remote and half known places across the world. That doesn't apply, however, to this volume. In fact Franck goes out of his way at the start and announces his intention to travel the West Indies via train, steamer, and car. The result is one of his least interesting works. Afoot, Harry often interacts and shares his life with those most likely to be left out of the picture of most travel works, the poor, the peasants, the marginal, and the obscure. But Franck travels with his wife on this trip (he also traveled with his family to northern China, particularly Peking, in another work, and that did not stop him from going afoot in trips across that landscape) and so feels constrained to avoid the hardships he usually encounters. Because of opting for this broader view, Franck creates a distance that is usually erased in his stories and tales of wondering. And it's difficult to work up much of an enthusiasm for the places, American, British, and French holdings in the West Indies, that soon seem all the same. From Cuba to Santo Domingo, from Dominica to Barbados and Jamaica and on to Martinique and all the islands in between its the story of vast fields of sugar cane, interspaced with the ruins of outmoded sugar mills dotting the land. Only Haiti is different, because it is so impoverished and degraded that life barely exists at even the subsistence level--looking back it does, however, somehow appear to be better off than today's Haiti.
Particular and primary attention is given to American holdings and partially occupied places, so Cuba, Haiti and Santo Domingo get the majority of the pages. Still sameness prevails. Cuba, which should have been much more interesting, falls away into visits to a couple of wealthy plantations. Still, Franck provides a unique snapshot of the spring of 1920 in the places he visits. Usually lax in providing hard and fast dates, at least one can be determined in this instance. That comes with Franck's landing in Barbados on 26 March 1920. The date is sure because Franck comes ashore the same day as the future Edward VIII arrived to visit the island for twenty-four hours.
The biggest surprise is Franck's discussion of racial divisions and classifications. He has no pity, only contempt and dislike of the black population of the islands. This is something of a drastic change in his usual narrative of events. Elsewhere, when encountering mestizos, Indians, people officially designated as "colored," and Asians and Eurasians of very social class, he is mostly sympathetic to them, warm and even admiring of the least and their efforts to survive in places such as the Andes and deserts of China. Not here, where he is unrelenting in criticism of everything from hygiene to chaotic systems of governance and daily life. Despite the beauty of many of the places he visits, Harry no doubt anticipated his departure with relief. The reader adopts much of the same attitude towards the book by the end.
Particular and primary attention is given to American holdings and partially occupied places, so Cuba, Haiti and Santo Domingo get the majority of the pages. Still sameness prevails. Cuba, which should have been much more interesting, falls away into visits to a couple of wealthy plantations. Still, Franck provides a unique snapshot of the spring of 1920 in the places he visits. Usually lax in providing hard and fast dates, at least one can be determined in this instance. That comes with Franck's landing in Barbados on 26 March 1920. The date is sure because Franck comes ashore the same day as the future Edward VIII arrived to visit the island for twenty-four hours.
The biggest surprise is Franck's discussion of racial divisions and classifications. He has no pity, only contempt and dislike of the black population of the islands. This is something of a drastic change in his usual narrative of events. Elsewhere, when encountering mestizos, Indians, people officially designated as "colored," and Asians and Eurasians of very social class, he is mostly sympathetic to them, warm and even admiring of the least and their efforts to survive in places such as the Andes and deserts of China. Not here, where he is unrelenting in criticism of everything from hygiene to chaotic systems of governance and daily life. Despite the beauty of many of the places he visits, Harry no doubt anticipated his departure with relief. The reader adopts much of the same attitude towards the book by the end.
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